That does make sense only with Joomla the head of the document looks like this. I have highlighted the array containing the css files in red. If I am right then would I just add it as I have here highlighted in green. Thanks again Si <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="<?php echo $gantry->language; ?>" lang="<?php echo $gantry->language;?>" ><head> <?php $gantry->displayHead(); $gantry->addStyles(array('template.css','joomla.css','style.css','typography.css','custom.css' 'IE_alternativefornumtys.css')); ?></head>

Sorry if this may have been answered before but I could really do with a specific answer to a specific set of circumstances. I am very new to anything other than basic css.The best way to describe what I mean would be to look at the site in various browsers. http://www.livingwithaddicts.com/ .I have put this together for a charity using the Joomla CMS (version2.5). If you look at the site in Firefox it is as (for now as it ain't finished) how it's meant to look. It's fine in Chrome and passable apart from some easily solvable positioning issues in Opera. Then we get to IE and I have just added background:#485fc5; to get it to render partly as i wanted and will do the same to get the bg on the forms. I would like to explore some other ways of styling so it looks acceptable in IE. I don't want to go down the route of replacing gradients or text shadowing with graphics. Is there away of having a set of CSS that is only called if someone views in IE? If so how can I do this? Is this what's known as a hack? Other possibilities are that as I am using Joomla, I have had to put some inline styling into specific content and I think some of the generated code might either be depracated and/or a bit messy. Would this affect how it renders. Also I hurriedly (lazily) c& p'ed a chunk of css and modified the hex values to incorporate it in my existing css.(To anyone now sighing with disapproval, I apologize) This may not be the up to date syntax and I only heard of webkit the other day so that's what a novice I am. I will paste it here and hopefully not embarrass myself to much. If anyone fancies a look (or a laugh) then please do. I would really appreciate any advice. Here's the the code. I will attach screenshots to demonstratebody { background: #485fc5; background-image: linear-gradient(bottom, #485fc5 13%, #6e86ee 57%, #a0b0f5 79%); background-image: -o-linear-gradient(bottom, #485fc5 13%, #6e86ee 57%, #a0b0f5 79%); background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(bottom, #485fc5 13%,#6e86ee 57%, #a0b0f5 79%); background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, #485fc5 13%,#6e86ee 57%, #a0b0f5 79%); background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(bottom, #485fc5 13%, #6e86ee 57%, #a0b0f5 79%); background-image: -webkit-gradient( linear, left bottom, left top, color-stop(0.13, #485fc5), color-stop(0.57, #6e86ee), color-stop(0.79, #a0b0f5));}

I have to agree totally with most of these comments about Bill and the boys which saves me the time I would have spent posting exactly the same things. I have just spent a week doing a freebie site for an addiction charity with lots of nice gradiated bgs, only to find guess what IE won't have it. My fault for not researching properly but why can't they just get with the same program as everyone else. After all, all we are trying to do is create good looking functional websites that don't burden servers with unnecessary graphical content where a little bit off css will suffice. Personally i am big on open source solutions and advocate all those things on my own website and use it as much as possible with my my own projects. The problem is big corporations like MS, Apple et all have marketing budgets the size of the average economy of a reasonably sized country. Unfortunately most people are blinded by branding and want to take something out of the box and for it to work perfectly instantly. If it's shiny , it must be good! Contrary to popular belief, cyberspace does not belong to American corporations. So all this talk about security and control leads me to one point made by a famous American. "He who sacrifices his freedom for security deserves neither". We all sacrifice our freedom every time we utter the words Microsoft. The whole security issue is a smoke screen for market domination and if they weren't so domineering, a little more ethical and user friendly to those of us who might like to try a bit of Linux Mint once in a while, then maybe the hackers would leave them alone. Anyway, I am off the soapbox now. Could anyone point me in the right direction of how do code so that if someone is unfortunate enough to be using IE, that my site will still render an alternative to the elements they pedantically avoid catering for. Many Thanks Si